


destroy the middle (it’s a waste of time)

by jonsrightrib (sotakeabitofcalpol)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Based off that bit of mag 181 that made everyone cry, Canonical Character Death, Gen, How Do I Tag, Spoilers for mag 79 onwards, The inherent metaphorical value of a photograph, other archival staff but really minor, seriously I’ve written 25 works now why can’t i tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:40:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23485447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/jonsrightrib
Summary: The start is far from perfect, anyone could tell you that, and the finish line is even further from it.In the middle, there is a photograph, and there are people in it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	destroy the middle (it’s a waste of time)

**Author's Note:**

> Slight canon inconsistencies so I can angst. I aim only to upset with this.
> 
> Minor triggers for:  
> Blood  
> Burning (related to very minor self-harm)

Martin used to have a Polaroid camera. Bought it out of his first archival paycheque, mostly for the aesthetic, and never really got the hang of using it. He’d been...well, he used to be so unsure of his place that he couldn’t fail at anything else. Wasted a few packets of paper on blurry, useless photos he’d never quite had the heart to burn, but had put in a box and forgotten about.

Of course, there’s only one photo that matters at this point. The rest have fallen, to worms and blood and burning and time and everything else this goddamn fucking hellhole can throw at them.

An old photo he’d hated at the time, that cut out limbs and added red eyes and blurred frustratingly, and that had nothing on the ones just taken on the phone camera. He’d thrown it in the box in disgust, vowing never to look at it again.

He remembered it three days after they found the body of Jurgen Leitner.

* * *

Back in those days, when Jon smiled rarely but without the paranoia he’s worn like a straitjacket recently, it’d been a different place. They’d held him a birthday party. They aren’t going to get the chance, this year given Jon’s birthday is a week away, and...well, it’s just not going to happen. But that year, they’d held him a party; his ~~38th~~ 28th. It’s a warm memory amongst this mess, Tim and Sasha and even Jon smiling, Elias being weird, but that was normal. They’d had cake and terrible wine, and once Elias had gone they’d taken photos.

With the real Sasha.

She smiles at the camera, slightly blurry, blonde-brown hair curling tightly above her shoulders, jumper slipping down towards her elbows. He almost remembers that about her, how she’d worn that grey woollen jumper even though it was permanently off both shoulders, and how she’d laughed that laugh that crooked her mouth up to the right every time Tim’d teased her for still wearing it. How she’d teased Tim right back for his very specific taste in tea with her ink stained fingers wrapped around her own mug of Tetley, an ever-varying amount of milk and invariably no sugar because her mum had never kept in the house when she was a kid. He almost remembers.

He almost remembers, and it’s enough that he has to leave the room, because Tim is angry and Jon is gone and that detective is still stalking around the institute, and he never even got to mourn for her, his friend who was dead for months and he never even noticed. So he leaves, walks into the alley that Jon used to fill with smoke, and Martin Blackwood cries.

* * *

He keeps it in his pocket from then on, even when Basira joins and Jon comes back and everyone is hot-cold with mistrust and desperation. He would share it with the other two who’d known her, god knows they probably felt guilty over not remembering her, and the almost memories from the photo are as good as they’ll get. But by this point, he’s no longer fighting for any reason other than the memory of the woman who smiles out from that picture, so it stays with him.

* * *

He leaves it on Tim’s desk the day before they leave to fight the ritual. He only has the one copy, the photocopies come out with a stranger’s face no matter what he does. He could have left it on Jon’s desk; it’s not really like he and Tim were best friends, and he definitely isn’t in love with _him_. There’s no reason to leave it on Tim’s desk except his gut is telling him he isn’t coming back.

He knows he will, obviously. Sure, Sasha died, but she never had the fight that Tim has. She wouldn’t have fought back like he will, and the thought curls in his gut but he ignores it and places it on the cluttered desk.

He doesn’t stop to look at Tim once it’s there, but he knows he’s seen it because there’s a set to Tim’s shoulders that’s a weight off and on them at the same time when he leaves for home ~~not for the last time, not Tim~~ , that he hasn’t written anything new in the last two hours, that there’s the corner of thumb print in blue ink and a splash of his stupid _cranberry and orange tea with maple syrup and a single brown sugar_ on the back, that it’s been left perfectly central in a bit of cleared space amongst the chaos. He doesn’t move it, because Tim will know it was him when he comes back.

It stays there, of course, because Tim doesn’t come back.

* * *

He takes it from the still untouched desk three months after he left it there because he needs to get rid of it, get rid of the last thing that’s really tying him to this place. Jon hadn’t come back either, so it’s just the woman in the photo left.

He lights a match, but it burns down to his fingers and he doesn’t notice because he’s left a single teardrop beside the fingerprint, and he’s left his mark. He’ll be with them now, if this does all go the way he thinks it will. Jon never got the chance to leave his mark on the thing, but that won’t matter once they’re all gone.

He leaves it in Jon’s desk drawer, also still untouched, not because he thinks he’ll come back but because he can’t destroy it. He can’t delude himself this time; he’d said Tim was coming back. He can’t pretend Jon is too.

* * *

Jon comes back. He’s too cold, too lost in salty mist to care. It won’t help with the chill in his bones.

He knows Jon finds the photo because he finds a sticky note, smudged and shaky, on his laptop that simply reads ‘thank you’. He looks, just out of curiosity, not because he cares any more, and it’s still in the drawer, amongst the jar of ashes and assorted bits, somewhere near where he probably left it.

Of course Jon’s the one to get blood on it. He isn’t bothered to find out what from. But it’s marked by all of them now, and that’s all that matters.

Jon goes into the Buried.

* * *

It’s funny, he thinks; all the people in that photo are gone now. They’ve all been left in the dust.

Martin goes into the Lonely.

* * *

They leave the Institute, and he can feel they aren’t coming back. Same way he knew to leave the photo on Tim’s desk all that time ago.

* * *

The world ends, and all he can think of is that photo, left in the Institute, full of people who are dead now, and wonder if they ever had a chance.

**Author's Note:**

> Y’all finished that? Seriously? Ok wow.
> 
> I just...have a lot of feelings and a habit of attaching them to inanimate objects and building 1k extended metaphors from them at one in the morning.
> 
> The title is from Youth by Daughter, which you should definitely listen to.


End file.
